Skip to main content

New Planetary System



HIP 65426b



The Extra solar planet encyclopedia has been updated recently with a new discovery of planetary system. This planetary system called as HIP 65426 is weirdest in all sense. It has got researches and astronomers thinking as in how can such system exist.

HIP 65426 consists of a star named HIP 65426 and a planet named HIP 65426b. The planet’s temperature is around 1300-1600 Kelvin. It has a radius of 1.5 times greater than that of Jupiter and mass between six to twelve times of Jupiter’s mass. A group of astronomers and researchers from Max Planck Institute of Astronomy (MPIA) have found this system.

Now, why is HIP 65426 is weird? This star and planet questions the current models of stars and solar systems. How? This is how. The planet, HIP 65426b is a massive star that orbits a fast spinning star (HIP 65426). The star spins approximately 150 times faster than the sun! Also, the star is 14 million years young. This has raised many questions. Gael Chauvin of University of Grenoble and University of Chile said: “we would expect a planetary system this young to still have a disk of dust, which would show up in the observations. HIP 65426 does not have any such disk known for the moment”. Also the reason why the star is rotation so fast is still unknown.

The planet orbiting the star is at a distance of 100 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Also the system is found in Centaurus constellations, which is 363 light years away.

The Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research instrument (SPHERE) at the Very Large Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, Chile has managed to capture a direct image of this planet. Thomas Henning from MPIA says: “analysis of the direct light of the planet allows us to constrain the composition of planet’s atmosphere with great confidence.” The light from HIP 65426 is reflected from the planet HIP 65426b and captured by SPHERE.

From the information gathered by the SPHERE, the planet is believed to have thick layers of hydrogen gas. SPHERE’s spectrography has also detected the presence of water.

Most gas giants don’t have orbits that far out unless their orbit is disrupted. In this scenario, the planet formed close in and another planet formation was destabilized. This planet fell into the star and this gave rise to the formation of HIP 65426b. This is one possibility. Another possibility is that the star and the planet formed at the same time, which is so far unheard of.

In any case, this planetary formation is puzzling and it has a lot of explaining to do.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Horizons Spacecraft

New Horizons spacecraft is launched with primary mission to flyby Pluto and its moons and study them. But before we get into this blog, read the previous blog about the planet Pluto and get an overall idea about the planet. Now that you have read about Pluto’s history, orbit and composition let’s get into this NASA’s New Frontiers Program- New Horizons.   New Horizon is space probe which was launched on January 19, 2006.It is engineered by Johns HopkinsUniversity   Applied Physics Laboratory  (APL) and the  Southwest ResearchInstitute  (SwRI), with a team led by  S. Alan Stern . The name “New Horizons” was derived from Pluto’s moons, Nix and Hydra. The first letters of their names, N and H are initials of New Horizons. MISSION: The primary mission of New Horizons spacecraft is to study Pluto and study one or more Kuiper belt objects.   Originally the mission was to explore the undiscovered planets and objects in the solar system. Thi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Super Void

As mysterious as it can get, Universe has always been a place for strange and weird things. Now, scientists have a “Super-Void” in space which is missing galaxies! So before we get in to the topic, first let’s discuss what is “Void” According to Wikipedia, Voids or Cosmic Voids , as they are called, are vast spaces between galaxy filaments in the universe, which has few or 0 galaxies. Galaxy filaments are largest know structures in the universe, which have thread-like structures. They form boundaries between voids in space. These voids have very less density of matter that is considered for typical observable universe. Voids are believed to be formed in Big Bang, followed by massive collapse its mass and compressed by Baryonic matter . After Big Bang, there were lots of areas with high and low densities, which were changing rapidly. The regions with high density collapsed rapidly under gravity eventually causing foam-like structure of cosmic web of voids. Voids loc...
1 comment
Read more

RETROGRADE AND PROGRADE

Since childhood we have learnt that all the planets go around the Sun. Meaning, the planets and other celestial objects rotate around the Sun in specific directions. But did you know that not all follow the same directions? Some follow the Sun’s rotation while some go in the opposite direction. After observing these motions of certain planets and comets, astronomers termed these rotations as “ Prograde ” and “ Retrograde ”. Before we get into these terms, let’s first understand how the direction of the motion is determined. The direction is determined by the primary object in system that forms the system’s hub. In our case, it is the Sun. So rotation of all the planets and celestial bodies is decided by the Sun’s direction of rotation. Now that we know how the motion is determined, let’s get into the above mentioned terms. Prograde:   It is the motion in the direction of that of the Sun. Meaning, most of the planets and some comets move in the direction of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more